Columbus, OH – On Tuesday, The Buckeye Institute filed two new lawsuits on behalf of two more Ohioans—Eric Denison of Westerville and Josh Schaad of Blue Ash—which call for the courts to declare unconstitutional an Ohio law that allows the cities of Columbus and Cincinnati to tax the income of workers who do not live in, and have not been working within, the respective municipalities.

“Ohio’s dystopic novel keeps getting more convoluted. Not only has Ohio absurdly deemed work that was actually performed at home or elsewhere to have been performed in higher-taxed office locations, but many folks are now being forced to pay more in municipal income taxes for 2020 than they did in 2019, even though they spent less time working in Columbus and Cincinnati respectively,” said Robert Alt, president and chief executive officer of The Buckeye Institute and one of the lawyers representing Messrs. Denison and Schaad.

Eric Denison and Josh Schaad work offsite for their respective employers. In years past, both have requested and received proportional refunds for work performed outside the city limits of Columbus and Cincinnati. When the Ohio General Assembly passed House Bill 197—which absurdly deemed all work performed elsewhere because of the health emergency to have been performed at the employees’ principal place of work for the purposes of levying income taxes—Messrs. Denison’s and Schaad’s municipal income taxes increased even though they had spent less time at their main office locations in those municipalities.

These two new lawsuits were filed by The Buckeye Institute in Franklin County Court of Common Pleas and Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas respectively. The Buckeye Institute previously filed another similar case, Buckeye v. Kilgore, in July 2020, and an amicus brief in New Hampshire v. Massachusetts calling on the U.S. Supreme Court to protect Granite Staters from unconstitutional taxation by Massachusetts.

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